Live recording with PT LE

[bstaley]

I have successfully been recording with PT LE since the release. My current machine is pretty stable (PIII@933,CUSL2-C,45gb IBM Deskstar dedicated to audio). The most tracks I've needed to record at once has been 11. My machine did this no problem. I've recently had a band approach me about coming out and recording one of their shows live and I'd like to do it, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experience with this. Perhaps even somebody from Digi could give some answers to the questions I have.

Should my current PC configuration be able to record the full 18 tracks at once without errors?

What happens if the wave files exceed the 2gb FAT32 limit? Will I get an error?

If I record a full set (45-60 minutes), what would be the best way to split up the songs afterwards instead of having one huge song?

Is there a way to drop markers during the recording (like in sound forge)? This might be in the manual, but I've never needed to do it until now.

How much disk space will I need per minute for 18 tracks (24bit/44.1khz)?

If there are any other tips I would appreciate it. I'm trying to avoid any unexpected problems that could occur. THANKS!

[crs117]

i will detail more later (cause i am on lunch break), but i used an athlon 800 sdr 256, and a new 45 gig hard drive to record 14 tracks for over 2 hours. i used about 27 gigs worth of data, and i think that fat 16 is the one that had the 2 gig max file size, and you should be using fat 32 without problems. Just make sure you are recording on a partion big enough to hold all of the files. A small recommendation if you have multiple drives, you may want to record half of the tracks on one drive and the other half on the other drive. But at 14 tracks i had no problems.

Christian

[ReniuR]

We recorded a live show a while back, and it turned out pretty cool. You can hear a couple tracks from it on our site. Your files won't get near 2 gigs. We recorded it all as one session with no stops, and cut them apart after we bounced. I say go for it, if you can record 11 at a time with no problems, you can most likely handle 18.

[Rock_Artist]

I have no knwoladge of splitting/marking during recording.
I suggest making the recording in a single take and afterward to mark/split it.
It's pretty simple as you'll see at the end of the songs some sort of fade/lower levels.
Your system should be able to 18tracks with no problem.

If you want to be in 100% sure you can simply record 18tracks at once regardless to source. the power & diskspace needed would be the same even with one signal source.

HD preparations:
- Have enough space (10GB is safe enough to my opinion).
- Defrag the drive.

Record in one take, such way the disk won't make problems as the data would be kept linear and you can be safe from any problem of hard drive slow seeking or other disk problems.

Good Luck!

[bstaley]

Thanks for the replies. Keep 'em coming.

[crs117]

Bstaley,

Like i said, we recorded using 14 tracks for some probly like 2 1/2 hours at 24/44. I am looking at my folder right now (with all the audio files), and whole thing is weighing in at 26.3 gigs. Even if you split up the songs i would still expect each song/session to weigh in at around 1 gig each, but like i said if you are using fat 32 unless your drives are still partitioned you shouldnt have to deal with a file size limit (i think in fat 32 the limit is like a terrabyte, i cant recall but its ridiculously large).

My biggest regret in recording the show was not getting enough mics to properly record the drums. I used two over heads, a snare and a kick, and the symbals constantly over took the toms, but with some mixing i pulled the toms out with some equing. make sure to use enough mics on the drusms (plus 2 over heads for left and right to get the nice drum reverb/symbols sound). We put the drummer behind a plexiglass stand too to keep the drums from leaking too much in the rest of the mix. Also we put head phones on the drummer instead of a giant moniter next to the mics.

As far as vocals are concerned here is what i wish we had done. i hate overdubbing concerts. i wish i had gotten a good quality mic to place parallel to my sm 57 that i used on stage. I would not have used it to play through the house but to be on the recording. Next time i will plan on doing that, but if you dont i would make sure to plan on doing overdubs.

Also the thing that really made the kick stick out was sending the kick to another track and jumping the volume on both, then equinging it to how i wanted it to sound. Its like having 2 signals from the kick drum, but in doing that i got the low end kick i was looking to hear.

christian

[SSRJazz]

Umm...

I don't think the 2 gb limit is ever going to be a problem because protools will automatically start new files way before you get a wav file that big...at least that's how I -thought- it worked to get around said limitations of the filesystem. Nothing you need to do at all, pro tools takes care of it for you

[Peter at Ransom Recording]

Just a thought do you really need to record at 24bit? A live concert is going to have large spill on most mics and the dynamic range of 16 bits is unlikely to be an issue, you'll save disc space.

You can of course mix at 24 bit later to keep quality.
Peter

[Vertige]

Too drop marker during recording, you just need to hit enter at the right time, there it is.